Who is Slavoj Zizek? For some the most dangerous philosopher in the West, for others the most famous person from Slovenia after Melania Trump. Is Slavoj Zizek even Slavoj Zizek? Or is he - as he claims of all of us - just an actor portraying a certain image of himself? In any case, Slavoj Zizek is a pop star. Because he still questions capitalism. Because he has an almost romantic view of love. Because he radically thinks the teachings of psychoanalysis through to the end. His new book has just been published: „Surplus-Enjoyment. A Guide for the Non-Perplexed”.

Visiting the FREIHEIT DELUXE studio, Slavoj Zizek experiences a Slovenian-Croatian homecoming. Together, Jagoda Marinic and Slavoj Zizek go in search of the "true Balkans". They venture into difficult territory when they analyze the failure of woke ideologies and ask about the possible benefits of authoritarian leadership. They shed light on why identity politics does not help in the class struggle. And they peek into the abysses of love and desire. Slavoj and Jagoda - a multilingual encounter of a very special kind!

Here you hear...

how Slavoj describes an unholy alliance between the woke left and the Alt-Right (3:40) and why debates about toilets created the space for Trump (8:55)

why some on the left really wept over the Trump mob storming the Capitol (11:35)

Slavoj provocation #1: why we need a little more authoritarian rule (17:16)

why #MeToo goes further than Marxism (24:38)

what you can learn from porn (26:39)

how Slavoj describes his almost romantic notion of love (32:56)

why Slavoj likes Rammstein and why this provocation doesn’t work (43:00)

where the real Balkans are (48:00)

how Slavoj survived his own psychoanalysis (50:01) and why we are all just acting

Slavoj provocation #7: the great praise of politeness and sincere hypocrisy (52:45)

why we should all be more confused (1:03:35)

what has become of the good old working class and how capitalism should be criticized today (1:06:00).

Here is the translation of the conversation and a machine-generated transcript of the English original:

https://download.hr2.de/podcasts/freiheit_deluxe/zizek-transkript-100.pdf

FREIHEIT DELUXE with Jagoda Marinic is a production of Hessischer Rundfunk in cooperation with the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.